In Spain Pilar Miro, film director, died in Madrid at age 57. Her films included "Beltenebros," "Gary Cooper Is in Heaven," "Bird of Happiness," "The Dog in the Manger," and the 1979 expose "The Cuenca Crime."
Links: Spain, Film

1997 Oct 19

In Bilbao, Spain, the new Guggenheim Museum Bilbao was scheduled to open. The 256,000 sq. ft. titanium, limestone and glass structure was designed by American architect Frank Gehry and funded entirely by the Basque regional government under the direction of Thomas Krens, director of the Guggenheim.
Links: Spain, Architect, Museums

1997 Nov 6

In Spain flooding of the Guadiana River killed 18 people in Badajoz. A total of 31 died along the Spanish-Portuguese border from the storm induced flood.
Links: Spain, Flood

1997 Nov 29

It was reported that a 65-foot, 70-ton finback whale died on Spain’s northern coast from ingesting 30 plastic bags, a rubber glove and several hard plastic objects that formed into a ball and blocked its digestive tract.
Links: Spain, Food, Whales

1997 Dec 1

Spain’s Supreme Court convicted 23 leaders of the Herri Batsuna (Unified Country) Basque separatist coalition. Each was sentenced to 7 years in prison and fined $3,500. In 1999 the Constitutional Court annulled the sentences and 22 leaders were released.
Links: Spain, Basques

In Spain the National Court found journalists Fernando Alonso and Andoni Murga guilty of weapons possession and membership in the ETA and sentenced them to 39 years each in prison.
Links: Spain, Basques

1997 Dec 5

In Spain a politician’s bodyguard was shot to death hours before authorities arrested 19 of 23 leaders of the pro-Basque independence party, Herri Batasuna, in San Sebastian. Protestors also commandeered a bus and burned it.
Links: Spain, Basques

1997 Dec 11

In Spain Jose Luis Caso, a former town councilor in Renteria, was killed by two suspected Basque separatists in Irun.
Links: Spain, Basques

1997 Dec 13

In Spain tens of thousands marched in San Sebastian to protest the murder of Jose Luis Caso.
Links: Spain

1997 Dec 30

In Spain a judge accused 36 Argentine military and police officers of involvement in torture and the disappearance of 600 Spaniards during the dirty war from 1976-1983. Most of those named served in the ESMA, a torture center used by the military regime.
Links: Argentina, Spain

Jerome Mintz (d.1997 at 67), US anthropologist, published "Carnival, Song and Society: Gossip, Sexuality and Creativity in Andalusia." He had earlier produced 6 films about tradition and change in Andalusia.
Links: Spain, Books, Anthropology

1997

Mohamad Kamal Mustafa, imam of Fuengirola, Spain, authored “Women in Islam,” in which he defended a husband’s right to beat his wife.
Links: Spain, Women, Books, Islam

1997

Goya's 18th-century "The Apparition of the Virgin of Pilar" and el Greco's 16th-century "The Annunciation," were stolen after a private exhibition tour. In 2011 Spanish police recovered the stolen masterpieces at a private house near the southeastern city of Alicante.
Links: Spain, Robbery

1997

Luis Antonio Garcia Navarro (d.2001) was named music and artistic director at the long-closed Teatro Real in Madrid.
Links: Spain

In Spain a wall of acidic toxic liquid, 5 million cubic meters, broke free from an Aznalcollar mine waste lagoon near Seville and threatened the 300-sq. ml. Donana National Park. The tainted water was diverted to the Guadalquivir River and then to the Gulf of Cadiz. 13,300 acres of cropland were expected to be left barren for 25 years due to the spill.
Links: Spain, Environment

1998 Jun 23

In Spain a Boeing 727 with 131 people was hijacked and diverted to Valencia.
Links: Spain, Hijacking

1998 Jul 11

From Spain it was reported that tens of thousands of rotting fish were left when a section of the Llobregat River was drained to fast to fill a repaired canal.
Links: Spain, Fish

TimelinesA text-based site.

1998 Aug 31

In Spain Jose Antonio Ardanza, 14-year president of the Basque country, dissolved the regional parliament and set elections for Oct 25. He urged ETA extremists to lay down their arms.
Links: Spain, Basques, ETA

1998 Sep 16

The Basque separatist ETA announced an indefinite cease fire to begin Sep 18. It ended 14 months later after one round of talks with the Aznar government. PM Jose Maria Aznar responded with a hard-line crackdown that ended cooperation between Basque moderates and Spanish political parties.
Links: Spain, Basques, ETA

1998 Sep 25

In Morocco a chartered Spanish airliner crashed and killed all 38 people onboard.
Links: Spain, Air Crash, Morocco

1998 Oct 8

In northeastern Spain and excursion boat capsized and sank on Lake Banyoles and 20 French tourists were drowned.
Links: Spain, France, Tragedy

1998 Oct 16

After receiving a Spanish extradition warrant, British police arrested former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in London for questioning about allegations that he had murdered Spanish citizens during his years in power. Pinochet was held for 16 months as courts decided whether he could be extradited to Spain; he was allowed in 2000 to return to Chile, where a court later held that he could not face charges because of his deteriorating health and mental condition.
Links: Chile, Spain, Britain

In Oporto, Portugal, 21 member nations met for the Ibero-American summit. 19 Latin American countries were represented along with Spain and Portugal. A document was prepared urging the industrialized nations to help stave off economic recession.
Links: Portugal, Spain

1998 Oct 19

A Spanish judge filed a motion for the extradition of Gen’l. Pinochet from England that encompassed 94 cases of genocide, as well as the deaths of 79 Spaniards who were killed in Chile after being abducted by an alliance of south American intelligence services.
Links: Chile, Spain, Britain

1998 Oct 30

Spanish judges ruled that Spain has the legal right to bring criminal charges against Augusto Pinochet and to seek his extradition from Britain.
Links: Chile, Spain, Britain

The death toll from Hurricane Mitch was reduced to 6,076 in Honduras and increased to 4,000 in Nicaragua. Aid of $66 mil was ordered from the US, $8 mil from the EU, $11.6 mil from Spain along with pledges from other countries and private organizations.
Links: Honduras, Nicaragua, Spain, USA, EU, Hurricane

A 40-nation conference on the Dayton accord opened in Madrid.
Links: Spain

1998 Dec 19

In Spain Antonio Ordonez, bullfighter, died at age 66. His career was chronicled in a Hemingway novel.
Links: Spain

1998

William Herrick (83) published his memoir "Jumping the Line." Included in the work is his story of the time he spent with the Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The events were fictionalized in his 1969 novel "Hermanos."
Links: Spain, Books

1998

The book "Lisbon" by Julia Wilkinson was published by Lonely Planet. It covered the cultural and historical aspects of the city as well as current details.
Links: Spain, Books

Ramon Sampredro, a Spanish paraplegic who campaigned for euthanasia and spent 30 years in bed, died by sipping water laced with cyanide. He did this after crafting a complex scheme to have friends prepare and deliver the poison in incremental steps so no single one of them could be charged criminally. The story was made into the movie "El Mar Adentro" (The Sea Inside), which won an Oscar for best foreign film in 2005.
Links: Spain, Suicide, Film

1999 Jan 1

The Maastricht Treaty specified that a monetary union will be established by this date, and laid down several criteria that EU nations must fulfill in order to join. Some of the criteria included: maximum budget deficits of 3% of GDP, a cap on government debt of 60% of GDP. The European economic and monetary union (EMU) was scheduled to start with a new "Euro" currency. Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain made the transition. Public use was set for Jan 1, 2002. [see Jan 4].
Links: Austria, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, EU, Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg

In Spain some 60,000 people marched in Bilbao to protest recent arrests of members and supporters of the ETA.
Links: Spain, Basques, ETA

TimelinesA text-based site.

1999 Mar 24

In Britain the high court rejected the claim of Pinochet for immunity from prosecution, but reduced the charges that could be brought against him to offenses after Sep 29, 1988. 27 of the 30 charges in the Spanish warrant were thrown out.
Links: Chile, Spain, Britain

1999 Jul 6

In Spain Joaquin Rodrigo, classical composer, died at age 97 in Madrid. His best known work was "Concierto de Aranjuez."
Links: Spain, Composer

1999 Oct 8

In London a court ruled that Gen'l. Pinochet can be extradited to Spain for trial on torture and conspiracy charges.
Links: Chile, Spain, Britain

1999 Nov 2

Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon named former Argentine Pres. Leopoldo Galtieri in an indictment along with 95 other military officers, who presided over the "Dirty War" from 1976-1983.
Links: Argentina, Spain

1999 Nov 16

A 2-day Ibero-American summit for heads of state from Latin America, Spain and Portugal met in Havana. Int'l. finance and the effects of economic globalization on developing countries was the central theme. The 18 heads of state signed a Havana Declaration.
Links: Portugal, Spain, Cuba, Summit

In Spain the Basque ETA announced that it would end a 14-month cease-fire due to inaction over their call for independence.
Links: Spain, Basques, ETA

1999 Nov

The Basque support group, Ekin, was formed with the aim of "impelling independence, nation-building and socialism at street level." On Oct 1, 2011, the Gara newspaper's website said two unidentified spokesmen told it that "Ekin members have ended their endeavors as an organization."
Links: Spain, Basques, ETA

1999 Dec 22

In Spain police found a 2nd van loaded with 1,650 pounds of explosives in Alhama de Aragon. Two days earlier a van, bound for Madrid, was stopped with 1,980 pounds of explosives.
Links: Spain, ETA

May Day marches and protests took place around the world. In Berlin violence erupted as some 10,000 anarchists marched against "capitalism and imperialism" after some 1200 neo-Nazis rallied. In London some 2,000 demonstrators caused havoc in London. Tens of thousands gathered in Madrid and some 15,000 demonstrated in both Russia and Istanbul. Hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Sao Paulo, Brazil and some 20,000 marched in Quito, Ecuador.
Links: Brazil, Turkey, Russia, Spain, Ecuador, Britain, Germany, Labor

2000 May 7

In Spain Jose Luis Lopez de La Calle, a columnist for El Mundo, was shot and killed in Andoain. The ETA was blamed.
Links: Spain, Basques, ETA

2000 Jul 6

In Spain a bus enroute to a summer camp for teens collided with a truck hauling pigs near Soria and at least 25 people were killed.
Links: Spain, Bus Crash

2000 Jul 10

DASA (minus MTU) merged with Aerospatiale-Matra of France and Construcciones Aeronáuticas SA (CASA) of Spain to form the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS). DASA was founded as Deutsche Aerospace AG on May 19, 1989 by the merger of Daimler-Benz's aerospace interests (MTU, Dornier and two divisions of AEG). In July 1989 the two AEG divisions were themselves merged within Deutsche Aerospace to form Telefunken Systemtechnik (TST). In December 1989 Daimler-Benz acquired Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) and merged it into DASA.
Links: Spain, France, Germany, Aviation, M&A

2000 Jul 12

In Spain a car bomb exploded at the entrance of the Corte Ingles department store in Madrid. 10 people were injured.
Links: Spain, ETA